


daddy's working through some stuff

by negativecosine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mental Health Issues, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/negativecosine/pseuds/negativecosine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not the only kid in the world who has seen his father like this, probably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	daddy's working through some stuff

**Author's Note:**

> This is really personal. Posting it feels a little outside my comfort zone, honestly. Normally I'm really really into constructive criticism on my writing, but for this... a private message would be better. Thanks.

daddy's working through some stuff

(your little arms can't hold him down)

 

Your designated embarrassing childhood nickname is Big-Ears, because they are huge, and also because you spend a lot of time under the heavy oaken table in the kitchen, listening. They don't generally catch you listening, they only catch you when you talk about it later—you know way more gossip than a five-year-old should, about affairs and politics and family history. You probably know more about what weird stuff your aunts and uncles get up to than any of your siblings or cousins.

 

You learn a lot of words this way—James and Lily don't really talk to you, they're too wrapped up in how cool they are to mess with kids—so your vocabulary comes almost entirely from Aunty Mione and Mum chatting over coffee in the kitchen when Dad's gone to work. You know Uncle Ron can't do some Husband Things (you presume this means he doesn't braid Aunt Mione's hair often enough, which is the main Husband Thing you've caught your dad doing to your mum), you know Uncle Charlie is never gonna get married ever ever, you know the word homophobic (something about spiders? Gran and Uncle Ron both hate spiders so that must be it), you know that Mum misses flying and really hates writing, you know that Granpa's forgetting a lot of things, you know something's wrong with Dad.

 

You wouldn't know this thing about Dad if you didn't spend your mornings under the kitchen table, resting up against the legs and playing with crumbs on the tile floor. You've never seen Dad be anything less than a wizard-god, some sort of mythical superhero who can squish a spider (Dad's not homophobic, that's good) and braid hair and make evil explode. You have seen Dad give huge shiny Galleons to dirty men in the alleys off of Diagon, you've seen him yell at a Muggle Police Gentleman (you love saying those words together) for not doing anything about a gang of teenagers yelling out at girls, you've seen him put on a tie and go to the Ministry (because you got to put on a small red tie and go with him, for the “pity vote,” Mum said when she smoothed your hair down) and make a room full of old, beardy wizards look really, really ashamed of themselves. Dad's basically Batman but cooler. And gives, presumably, way better hugs than Batman.

 

But also you know the word “trigger” because Aunt Mione told Mum that's what happened, when Mum was shaking so bad she couldn't pour her coffee. You know Dad doesn't sleep much at night, because Mum tells Aunt Mione about the extra pot of coffee she has to make some days. Coffee, not tea, she always says. “Not tea.” You know because when you have bad dreams, like about giant snakes or falling off of towers or weird stuff, Dad's always on the couch when you creep downstairs. Many mornings have found the two of you still there, Dad idly mussing your hair while you snooze fitfully on his legs. James and Lily didn't have nightmares like you do, Mum tells Aunt Mione when she thinks you're out of the room. Aunt Mione wonders if your dad's dreams are contagious somehow.

 

That's another word you know well. “Contagious.”

 

You know the first one because Aunt Mione holds Mum's hand, and says it so low you mostly don't hear, and she says, “saw a lot of really awful stuff in the War,” which you know too much about, more than you should, and she also tells her, “something will put his mind back there, and he can't get out.”

 

You don't like the thought of your dad's mind getting pushed somewhere else. You're of the very firm opinion that it should stay in his head like a normal person's. You ask Dad, one night, after the tower-falling-dream, if his mind gets out through his scar, if his scar is like a door that lets his mind out to go somewhere else. Dad looks at you really serious, and asks where you heard something like that. You tell him—well, you don't tell him you were listening to Mum and Mione, that would get you in trouble, maybe, but you tell him that word, “trigger,” and you ask, is it when his mind goes out.

 

After that, Dad gets a doctor. Mum and Dad sit you down and talk to you about it first, a couple nights before James will be home from school for Christmas, and while Lily is visiting Uncle Dean and Aunt Luna so she can play with the twins.

 

“You know what you said about—my mind getting out of my head?” Dad asks you. You're sitting on one side of the thick oak table, your feet kicking idly up off the floor. Mum's sitting across from you, and Dad's standing behind her, with one brown hand on her shoulder, like he has to keep her from flying away. She doesn't look like she wants to fly right now, so you don't know why he's worried. “I'm going to go to a doctor who can—“

 

“A Healer or a Muggle Doctor,” you interrupt, pronouncing the syllables as crisply as you can around your own young tongue.

 

“Sort of both,” Mum says. “She's a witch, but she studied Muggle medicine. So she knows about... she knows about both things.”

 

“Alright, that sounds pretty smart,” you declare with a decisive nod. You kick your feet to swing up and off the chair. “Keep me apprised of the situation!” you tell them, and go to see about finding some paper and crayons.

 

“Apprised of the situa— are you _sure_ he's my kid?” you hear Dad laugh and ask Mum behind you. “What does he _do_ all day, chew on dictionaries?”

 

“If you're not sure, you can go look at that hair again,” Mum says, with that sort of snorty-laugh of hers that you really like.

 

 

The year you start Hogwarts, you are really nervous.

 

Being as you never really got any subtler about hiding out under the kitchen table than when you were six, your Aunt Hermione finds you there somewhere around dawn. She and Uncle Ron and their kids stayed the night, so you can all go to Platform 9 ¾ as a family in the morning. Aunt Hermione has got Morning Hair, a massive cloud around her head as she fumbles around your kitchen in the gray light, perfectly comfortable making coffee. She's done it so many times, you're pretty sure she knows better than Dad where all the stuff is.

 

It's not until she's seated at the table, bare ankles crossed neatly in front of you, that she addresses you.

 

“You aren't worried about the Sorting, are you?” she says softly.

 

You poke your head up on the other side of the table sheepishly. She looks very old and wise, before her coffee, you think. Like a really proper witch, a fairy-tale witch in the woods. You remember the exact day your aunt gained that fourth syllable in her name: when you finally managed to say it correctly, she fished a caramel from her pocket for you and told you your mum's full name. (You now take immense delight in calling Mum _Ginevra_ when she is being unreasonable.)

 

“Not exactly,” you say. You eye her coffee a little hopefully; you've gotten a taste for it, since Dad's been slipping you a little in your hot chocolate, when your insomnia never really went away. “I mean, I am, my middle name is _Severus_ , there's at least a half chance I'll get Sorted wrong, isn't there? But that's not... I mean, there's nothing I can do about that right now.”

 

Hermione gives a considered nod, and unpockets her wand to set some hot chocolate to making itself. “What else, then? Schoolwork? Making friends? I'm sure your father's told you, just follow any trolls you see going into bathrooms...”

 

“No!” you laugh, “No, nothing like that. Or, yes, but I think either James will bully people into being friends with me whether they like it or not, or I'll meet some really nice kids in the Library and James will bully me and my new friends for liking books. Or I'll just be friends with the books, I'm okay with that. But I'm... I'm a little worried about Dad.”

 

Hermione takes a sip of her coffee, pretty visibly burns her tongue on it, but puts up a remarkable front of being wholly concerned with your problems. This is why she's your favorite. Well, also because she floats your hot chocolate over to you wandlessly and just waits patiently for you to extrapolate.

 

“He's, you know,” you fumble. She does know. She's the reason you know, really. She nods. “Is he going to be okay, with just Mum and Lily around? I know they both mean well, but they don't... I don't think they really know what to do when he's. You know.”

 

Hermione seems to consider this for a bit. “Well,” she says slowly, “Your mother was there for a lot of it, you know. She understands a lot more of what happened than most people. And she knows when to... get the right kind of help. And of course he's got me and Ron,” she adds, a little belatedly.

 

“I'm worried about the times where he doesn't really _want—_ “

 

“-- _Coffee_ ,” you hear Dad say, almost directly behind you. You startle almost straight out of your chair, slopping warm chocolate over your knuckles. “Hermione, I love you. Marry me. Marry my wife.”

 

Hermione shoots you a look, and you know that's as much of a real conversation you're going to get on this topic until you're home again for holidays. Maybe longer—Christmas is a busy time, with this family. Then she's laughing brightly and looping an arm around your father and dragging him stumbling to the counter to pour him a cup. He's babbling gratefully about really gross stuff that he wants Mum and Aunt Hermione to do, like fill a bathtub with coffee and then pickle him in it. A well-placed “ _Eurgh, Dad!”_ gets him laughing and ruffling at your hair nicely, and a little knot of tension in your gut unwinds, just a little. Today's going to be one of the good days. That's good.

 

 

One of the bad days looks like this: you're home for the summer after your second year. You have exactly two friends, neither of them in Slytherin with you. You have so far written an average of more than two pages a day to each of them. Their parents are reportedly complaining that you're exhausting the owls.

 

You wake up like you normally do: groggy, annoyed, and about an hour before dawn. (You had fallen asleep as you normally do: groggy, on top of a book, and well past midnight.) You go downstairs to try and sneak some of the dregs of yesterday's coffee into your hot chocolate before Mum can catch you at it. You're officially on Caffeine Rehabilitation Programme, because Mum has decided that the coffee in your chocolate since you were nine years old has stunted your growth, and that's why you're too scrawny to even consider going out for the Quidditch Team.

 

(Mum and her brother had a really hilarious fight about whether you should even be _allowed_ to go out for Quidditch. Mum was strictly in favor, because sports strengthened the mind and body, she said, and also would help you get dates later. Uncle Ron was strictly against it, because “no nephew of [his]” would do anything to contribute to any kind of Slytherin victory. You'd chimed in that your placement on the team would surely go a long way to _prevent_ any kind of Slytherin victory, and then Mum had snapped at Ron for “ruining [your] self-esteem” and Ron had said something about that being better than “getting all big-headed and making his little cousins cry,” which was surely a reference to James' last visit to the Weasley house. It was all very silly, and went on for about two hours, until Dad got home. Everyone knew better than to fight in front of Dad.)

 

Dad is already up. This isn't uncommon—you've started to wonder why Mum even bothers keeping his side of the bed cleared, since it's been at least two years since you've seen any evidence of him actually sleeping in it. The unusual part is the television, which he has turned on, but muted. Almost no one watches the television in your house, and you aren't entirely sure why you have it in the first place, except for the few video tapes that Hermione or Dean occasionally bring over. Dad seems to be watching the news channel, though.

 

Or, not really watching. Just... looking at it. The reporter's mouth moves noiselessly as she stands in front of what looked like a very angry group of people in London.

 

“Dad,” you say, very softly. He jumps, disproportionately startled, and looks around at you, wild-eyed.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, sharply. You touch his shoulder, and he jumps again, looking badly upset. You take your hand away quickly.

 

“Dad,” you say again, “It's just me.” You don't try to touch him again, just move slowly, kind of sideways, so you can come around the couch and face him properly.

 

“Albus,” he calls you. He almost never calls you that—either just 'Al,' like everyone in the family, or both names, _Albus Severus_ , like a title, when he's trying to impart some significant wisdom upon you. When he calls you just Albus, it's usually when he's thinking about the Other Albus. “Everything's really fucked up these days, isn't it?” he asks you, as you climb gingerly onto the couch beside him.

 

“You're cursing a lot,” you tell him. You're really careful not to touch him again—now that you're close, you can see every line of tension and fear around his face, his shoulders, making his arms twitch. His knee is bouncing a little bit. “Did you sleep?”

 

He shakes his head, agitated, not quite looking at you. “When I sleep, I have to watch you die. Over and over.” His voice is really quiet and scary. He makes an abortive movement to touch you, and the movement's so jerky and sudden that you flinch away. He grabs his own hand reflexively, like he has to stop himself from snatching at you.

 

“Oh,” you say. Your father is a demi-god, still. He made the world you lived in. He took an old world, tore it open, and shook out what was salvageable. But he also can't sit still, and can't move. He looks trapped in his body. His glasses reflect the blue-white light of the silent television, so you can't see his eyes, but you can see his cheeks are wet.

 

You move really slowly this time, and make sure he can see your hand. He still jumps when you put your hand on his arm, but then relaxes a little when you don't move it, just keep it there. Your hand looks very small and fragile, and your father has arms like sharkflesh, thick and white and rough. You can feel the muscles jumping under his skin.

 

“Both of you,” he says, after a long time of silence. “All the ways it—did and didn't.”

 

You want to cry. You want to say _what_ , but you know what. You know who. It's not you, is it? You stay quiet.

 

“The tower,” he says. “You're old enough now,” and he's actually saying it _to you_ , and the switch is fast enough that you almost doubt what you heard a second ago. But, the tower.

 

“That dream I used to have?” you ask quietly. It's a harmless lie, to make it sound as if you still don't dream of it, of a hundred different ways you could plummet, fall, or get pushed.

 

“Albus, I—“ he turns to look at you, really look at you. You still can't see his eyes through the white glare, and it's creepy in the dim light. “It's time I told you, isn't it?”

 

It's two hours, almost, before anyone wakes. You're frozen on the spot, unable or unwilling to interrupt, even with questions about basic continuity points. The way he tells it, he's half talking to you, and half talking to The Other Albus. He apologizes at every turn, the mistakes he made, the things he should've done differently. You learn way more about Malfoy's dad than you ever wanted to know, even with the other stuff your uncles have said. He peters out as the dawn light is taking on a rose-gold tint, a spare moment before Mum comes downstairs and finds the both of you. You feel like... you feel like you were there. Something tight and nasty inside your gut is coiled up and shaking. You feel afraid. You see his fear, and you feel it, and you are definitely not going to sleep right for the next week at least.

 

When Mum comes down, he doesn't move his head, doesn't look up at her. He puts his hand on top of yours, on his arm, squeezes, then releases.

 

“Harry,” Mum says.

 

“Gin,” says Dad. You take your hand off his arm. “Can you make some coffee?”

 

You twist around to look at Mum. Her mouth is very flat. Her hair catches the red dawn light like her head is on fire. “Sure,” she says. “Come on, Al, may as well filch it while it's hot.”

 

 

On a bad day, that summer, you and Dad sit together, and apart. He stops showering, and snaps badly at Lily twice in one week, until she outright refuses to be away from Mum. James has started leaving the house right after breakfast, and staying out until well after Mum and Lily go to sleep. On bad days, you and Dad stop pretending to even try to sleep. You just sit on opposite ends of the couch, in the same clothes you woke up in, and watch the news. Dad won't let anyone open the curtains for a fortnight, and any sliver of light makes him flinch and curse. Mum stops making coffee, so you learn how to make it for you and Dad. Mum drinks her tea and flattens her mouth when she sees you do it, but doesn't say anything. July that year is a nasty affair, mostly silence with the occasional explosion as punctuation.

 

Dad doesn't like loud noises, so Mum can't listen to Quidditch matches on the wireless. Dad doesn't like sudden movements, so Lily can't play Witches and Princesses on the stairs. Dad doesn't like certain names, so Aunt Hermione stops leaving the newspaper out where you can see it.

 

August gets a little better. You know Dad's birthday marks some important dates. The weeks after it, the tension eases.

 

You don't stop dreaming of that tower death, but you have the good sense not to tell anyone about it anymore.

 

 

When you come home for Christmas in your third year, you finally catch Aunt Hermione alone in your kitchen for the first time in ages. Once again, the whole extended family is staying in your house—various beds have been magically expanded, and there is always at least one young cousin who conks out on the couch early in the night, so Dad's been forced by sheer overcrowding to sleep in bed with Mum again. Or sit up awake all night, watching her sleep. You don't really want to know what he does when he can't, in their room.

 

Hermione is a naturally early riser, you've learned. She sleeps pretty well, but can't sleep at all if the sun's up, so she's frequently in the kitchen around the same time you are. The family has given up all pretense of keeping the coffee from you, at this point, just as you've given up the facade of putting chocolate in it. You're okay with being short, anyways.

 

“Aunt Hermione,” you say in greeting, “You are extraordinarily well-adjusted.” You're the only one of her nieces or nephews that still bothers with her full name.

 

“Albus Severus,” she says pleasantly in turn, “Your standards are a little skewed.”

 

“How did they do with Lily gone?” you ask her. It is Lily's first year, and consequently the first time your parents have been alone in the house for so long in quite a long time. “Mum said it was ' _fine, just fine, Al dear,_ ' I think she sounds like Gran when she's lying, don't you?”

 

Hermione laughs. “She does, doesn't she? Ron manages it, too, it must be genetic. He goes all shrill. They had a bad time around Halloween, of course,” she adds, a little more seriously. This is the other thing you like about Hermione: she doesn't bother lying to you. The only other adult who never lies to you is your Dad, and you have sometimes wished that he _would_ , a little bit.

 

“Did he dissociate completely, or—“

 

“What have you been reading?” she asks quickly.

 

“Some stuff.” You don't really want to admit to your aunt exactly what Dastardly Slytherin Means it took to procure various psychology textbooks while at school.

 

“Hm.” She seems to concede that it's not really worth pressing. You're grateful. “Well, he had some flashbacks, and Ginny tells me it was a couple days before he could really convince himself. You know this isn't your responsibility, right?”

 

“He's my dad,” you tell her firmly. “I have to take care of him.”

 

“I'm not saying you shouldn't care. But he would have these problems whether you were at home or not, and—it's not that you can't help, but I hope you're not feeling guilty about going to school.”

 

You consider this a moment. “Not... not really. I'm just not sure I trust anyone else to know what he needs,” you say finally.

 

“ _Coffee,_ ” Dad says, directly behind you. You jump. “Hermione, we really need to talk about this four-way marriage situation, I think it could work.”

 

It's been years since the first time he made that joke in front of you, but it feels like a constant refrain. Hermione gives you a look, then gets up to go pour him some.

 

 

 

Dad takes you and James to see a movie. Lily bags off to go shopping with Aunt Angelina, so Dad calls it a “boy's night out” and makes a big embarrassing deal about it. It's a Muggle theatre, of course, and it's a pleasantly mindless American summer action film. You have some untoward thoughts about the fit of spandex on the superhero's various attributes, but it's the summer you've just turned fifteen, and you're still in the Firmly Not Dealing With It stage. James tries baldly to pretend he's too cool to be seen with a couple of dorks like you and Dad—though, really, with those glasses, and in Muggle street clothes, he doesn't look much cooler. He still harangues Dad into upgrading the popcorn size far beyond reasonable, and still manages to consume more than half of it before the movie even starts.

 

You don't actually like popcorn much, so you're not totally sure why they've got you sitting in the middle, holding the bag. Dad and James are both lanky and absurd, and take up a lot of space, so you've got your elbows tucked in tight against your ribs, and you've pulled your knees up to cradle the popcorn. They both grab at it in mindless, regular intervals. Sometimes you look at their faces—they look so, so similar. When you glance at James during a brightly-lit daylight scene, though, you have to look away quickly. His glasses reflect the white light, the way Dad's did. It unsticks something in you, a little, makes you tense.

 

Dad seems to like the movie. You can see him grin a little, and his eyes wrinkle when Spiderman does the thing with the train. He gets through... almost all of it, really. The first fight scene, you could feel him tense next to you, but when you looked at his face, he was clearly just absorbed. He gets through a chase scene fine, doesn't react to the sirens, barely flinches through a couple of explosions. (James jumps badly, then shoves popcorn in your hair when he catches you laughing at him.)

 

It's not until the climax of the movie, you guess. Mary Jane is hanging off a steel girder, high above New York. Spiderman's caught in the battle of his life, trying to get to her in time. It's really, really cliché, and if you were a little less distracted, you'd be thanking your lucky stars that at least every single actor and actress in the movie is _damn pretty_ , or else you'd be bored to tears. Why do they even remake movies this recent, anyways?

 

Except, you can't concentrate on that. The popcorn cycle has been interrupted. James and Dad had been close to the dregs, picking out the nasty, oily little bits at the bottom, between the seeds. They kept getting into quiet slapfights over it. Except now Dad's apparently surrendured all popcorn rights, or something. You feel him shift, and look down to see he's clutching the armrest, white-knuckled.

 

Mary Jane is screaming. It's kind of shrill and annoying. You wish Spiderman would get the hell on with saving her, just so she'll stop.

 

Dad's arm is shaking.

 

You look up. You look at your father's face. At his white glasses, reflecting the light.

 

You watch him slowly, deliberately stand, and walk out of the theatre. He looks like he's limping, but that doesn't—that doesn't make any sense.

 

James looks over. “Dad?” he hisses. Dad doesn't stop. Doesn't hear. Is already out through the back door, the yellow streetlight slicing a line across the theatre.

 

You hand James the popcorn. He gives you a hard, long look. When he looks right at you, his glasses don't reflect any light. Is Mary Jane still screaming? Did good triumph over evil? You can't bring yourself to care. Finally, James drops your gaze, and nods, so you go after Dad.

 

You find Dad four blocks away, on a curb, kicking at an ashy gutter and getting his cloth shoes all soaked through with some nasty combination of mud and rot and oil. He's white-faced and shaking. You don't sit down next to him, or touch him, or talk to him. You make sure to walk all the way around, out of his peripheral vision, careful so you don't startle him.

 

He still startles.

 

“Dad,” you say. Your voice sounds exactly like you are: creaky, teenagery, scared, and a little pissed off. “I thought you said this was going to be okay.”

 

“Sit,” he says, and pats the nasty curb beside him. You give a mournful look to your light jeans, your only good pair, but sit anyways.

 

“Please don't tell me war stories right now,” you say quickly. “Please don't tell me she sounds exactly like Mum did, or something.”

 

Dad looks at you, hard and long. It's the first time that you've seen him like this—so vulnerable, but also so... disappointed. It burns in the back of your throat, but you've gotten to the point where you kind of can't take it. You can't take these half-dreams of every adult in your life being tortured, captured, made to fight each other.

 

“Not like Mum,” he says finally. “But... you're not my doctor, Al.”

 

“I came after you, didn't I?” You scuff a heel in the dirt. Not as vigorously as Dad's been doing—you're not as dead set on looking like shit as he apparently is. You're... you're hurt. You thought you were helping. You thought he needed you.

 

You also know that you can't do whatever it is he needs. You can't hold it, and let it go. Not like when you were young. You don't have any space inside you, there aren't big empty holes that needed to be filled, like it felt when you were a kid. You're filling up those places with you, now, instead.

 

“You aren't my doctor,” Dad finally repeats, his voice a little more steady. His voice sounds rough. You really wish you didn't know what your father sounds like after he's been crying. “You're my family. And I hope you're my friend.”

 

You consider this.

 

“Dad,” you say.

 

“Albus.”

 

“You're my nerdy friend who wears awful shoes and can't go to movies and drinks all my coffee and doesn't wash his dishes after.”

 

“You're my stuck-up little prick friend who cares about clothes and lives in my house for free and eats my wife's cooking and won't tell me any of the answers even though I know you know. ”

 

You punch your dad on the shoulder. Gently. He could still break.

 

 

 


End file.
